THE RELEVANCE OF GAY PROMISCUITY: Eve replies to Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh writes, "I don't, by the way, think the argument against gay marriage based on gay promiscuity works either. That argument, with which NR readers are doubtless familiar, holds that gay promiscuity will undermine marriage rather than vice-versa. ...Why should a committed, monogamous gay couple be refused marriage simply because other gay couples would be less faithful than they?"

I disagree that higher levels of gay (male) promiscuity are irrelevant, even though I don't think claims about promiscuity even come close to settling the question.

We can take structural features and tendencies of relationships into account when trying to figure out which kinds of relationships society and government should honor.

You can see this by looking at the arguments against polygamy. To my knowledge, nobody tries to argue that no polygamous families are ever sweet or loving or caring. Instead, people talk about structural problems and societal effects: polyg. families tend to manage conflict via authoritarian male control; they tend to divide societies into sexual upper class (lots of wives) and underclass (no wives at all); they make resource allocation more difficult; etc. etc. Are these claims, too, irrelevant? Should we not discuss structural flaws and societal effects when we talk about polygamy vs. monogamy? Conversely, if it's OK to discuss effects and tendencies w/r/t polygamy, why not w/r/t SSM?

Again, I don't think this settles the question; I just think it is relevant to talk about.

Finally, in re lesbians, here's a post I wrote a while back on lesbian couples and sexual fidelity.
posted by Eve at 9:31 AM | link

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